Atwar Bahjat

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The U.S.-led war in Iraq claimed the lives of a record
number of journalists and challenged some commonly held perceptions about the risks
of covering conflict. Far more journalists, for example, were murdered in targeted
killings in Iraq than died in combat-related circumstances. Here, on the 10th anniversary
of the start of the war, is a look inside the data collected by CPJ.

New York, April 20, 2010—Deadly, unpunished violence against the press has soared in the Philippines and Somalia, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found in its newly updated Impunity Index, a list of countries where journalists are killed regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes. Impunity in journalist murders also rose significantly in Russia and Mexico, two countries with long records of entrenched, anti-press violence.

New York, April 30, 2008 -- Democracies from Colombia to India and Russia to the Philippines are among the worst countries in the world at prosecuting journalists' killers according to the Impunity Index, a list of countries compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists where governments have consistently failed to solve journalists' murders.

As Venezuelan elections approached in November, President Hugo Chávez accused news broadcasters of engaging in a "psychological war to divide, weaken, and destroy the nation." Their broadcast licenses, he said, could be pulled--no idle threat in a country where a vague 2004 media law allows the government to shut down stations for work deemed "contrary to the security of the nation."

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For the fourth consecutive year, Iraq was the most dangerous reporting assignment in the world, exacting a frightening toll on local and foreign journalists. Thirty-two journalists and 15 media support staffers were killed during the year, bringing to 129 the number of media personnel killed in action since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Those numbers easily made Iraq the deadliest conflict for the press in CPJ’s 25-year history. For the first time, murder overtook crossfire as the leading cause of journalist deaths in Iraq, with insurgent groups ruthlessly targeting journalists for political, sectarian, and Western affiliations.

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New York, February 23, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns in the strongest terms the murder of three journalists on assignment in Samarra for the Dubai-based satellite news channel Al-Arabiya.

The bodies of correspondent Atwar Bahjat, cameraman Khaled Mahmoud al-Falahi, and engineer Adnan Khairallah were found today near Samarra, a day after the station lost contact with the crew, editors at Al-Arabiya told CPJ. Bahjat, 30, was a well-known on-air figure. In a statement, Al-Arabiya said she recently joined the channel after working as a correspondent for the Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera.

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The bodies of correspondent Atwar Bahjat, cameraman Khaled Mahmoud al-Falahi,
and engineer Adnan Khairallah were found near Samarra, a day after the station
lost contact with the crew, editors at Al-Arabiya told CPJ. Bahjat, 30, was a
well-known on-air figure. Al-Arabiya said she had recently joined the channel
after working as a correspondent for the Arabic satellite channel
Al-Jazeera.

Al-Falahi, 39, and Khairallah, 36, were employees of Wasan Productions who were on assignment for Al-Arabiya. The crew was on the outskirts of the city covering the bombing of the Shiite shrine Askariya, also known as the Golden Mosque.

Al-Arabiya Executive Editor Nabil Khatib said the station lost phone contact with the crew on the evening of February 22. A fixer for Wasan Productions told the station later that armed men driving a white car had attacked the crew after demanding to know the whereabouts of the on-air correspondent.